Censorship in Britain has been an up and down affair over the centuries. There have been times when censorship was strict and other periods in history when it has been lax and Britons have had considerable freedom to voice their opinions and create artworks without fear of arrest. Sometimes there has been censorship for good and sound reasons, for example in Wartime, but at other times there has been censorship that has been less justifiable and less morally acceptable. There have been times in the past when criticism of the Monarch for example was a criminal offence but it is not so today. Britain in the current era has unfortunately a culture of increasingly stringent censorship and today we have a situation where criticism, even justifiable and thoughtful criticism, of the ideology of Islam is becoming increasingly criminalised.
Britain today is a nation where the chill wind of censorship is blowing across it and the State, along with those who sing from the same hymn sheet as the State, are silencing those who speak words that are uncomfortable for some to hear. There has been over the last decade increasing restrictions on what Britons can say and how we can express ourselves. Britain today is not, unlike the United States, a nation which can truly be said to have freedom of speech. Approximately nine Britons per day are being arrested, and five of that nine convicted in courts, for what can only be described as ‘speech crimes’. They are being arrested and convicted not for things that many reasonable people would agree was wrong, such as credibly inciting a specific act of violence, but merely for mocking some of modern societies ‘Sacred Cows’ such as Islam, transgenderism and the ludicrous and fact-light doctrine that ‘all cultures are equal’.
The latest targets of censorship in the UK are the anti Jihad and human rights activist Tommy Robinson, one of his associates Danny Tommo and a whole host of UKIP supporters and those of a similar mind were permanently suspended from Facebook and Instagram. I’ve also heard that the Israeli commentator Brian of London has also been banned from these platforms as well. The author Peter McLoughlin has also had his book, ‘Mohammed’s Koran’ taken down. This book which is a line by line examination of the Koran, was removed by the Amazon book sale site. This is an amazing and worrying act of censorship by Amazon bearing in mind that this site seems to have little problem in selling copies of Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler. Britain is currently a land where there is a lot of digital book burning going on and it scares the hell out of me and should scare everyone.
Mohammed Shafiq of the Ramadhan Foundation is claiming credit for the ban on Tommy Robinson, his supporters and various UKIPers and is arrogantly hinting that there will be further censorship drives in the near future. This is worrying and will bring about a form of de facto Islamic ‘blasphemy’ law where people are forbidden to speak ill of this ideology even when such criticisms are plainly necessary. Shafiq is not a clean hands operator, you may recall back in 2014 when he tried to whip up a hate storm against the founder of counter extremism think tank Quilliam Maajid Nawaz when Mr Nawaz retweeted a ‘Jesus and Mo’ cartoon. In a Tweet , Shafiq said: ‘”Ghustaki Rasool Quilliam,“ which means ‘defamer of the prophet’. The result of this action was that Mr Nawaz received a number of death threats from Muslim extremists. I also think that Mohammed Shafiq may well have been a little ‘economical with the actualité’ with regards some of his comments about Mr Robinson. Now I don’t always agree with Mr Robinson but I have followed his work for a number of years, and looking back over this long interest in this man, I cannot recall any instance where, as Shafiq claims, has credibly incited violence against innocent Muslims. Mr Robinson has gone on record telling his supporters that those who engage in activities such as ‘hijab pulling’ are ‘cowards’ and do not represent his view which is that it is Islam not individual Muslims that are behind some of our current problems.
Although Shafiq is claiming credit for this ban, I don’t think that it could have been all his own work. I don’t think that it is too ‘tin foil hat’ to suspect that both the government and the BBC may have had a hand in this and similar recent bannings from social media. I really don’t think that Shafiq, who also works for the BBC, is powerful enough by himself to achieve this level of censorship? As Sargon of Akkad said this morning, the timing of these bans are very very suspicious. They come less than a week after Mr Robinson and his associates, many of whom have also been banned from Facebook and Instagram, managed to pull off an event in Manchester that has severely embarrassed the BBC. It is not, in my view, beyond the realms of possibility that the BBC,whose news output seems to be losing more credibility by the day among Britons, and a divided and chaotic government could have brought pressure to bear on Facebook and used Shafiq as a ‘front man’ for the decision.
This is not a strong action by government, if indeed an action that was influenced by government, it is a weak one that already seems to be starting to backfire. Firstly it has highlighted the arrogance and undue influence over our national life that people like Mohammed Shafiq have been allowed to garner. As Sargon stated in an interview with London’s LBC Radio the internet and especially social media has become the equivalent of the town square. It has also taken up many of the roles of the pub, the market and other areas where people converse with one another. Stopping people from discussing matters of concern to them,even if some are offended by such conversations in what is now the digital equivalent of a public space is indeed a restriction of free speech issue. Despite Shafiq’s whines to the contrary on this matter, this is very much an issue of freedom of speech and it is also an issue of who controls our speech and why. We neither need nor desire the likes of Mohammed Shafiq to act as our censor.
The second way that this policy is backfiring on the government, various self appointed censors and the Left, is that it has made Tommy Robinson a free speech martyr. Anybody with more than half a brain is probably asking themselves: ‘just what is so bad about Mr Robinson that he has to be silenced like this? Along with ‘if he’s being silenced then he must have something worth hearing?’
My argument against banning Tommy Robinson from social media is the same reason why I argue against Holocaust Denial laws. This is because the only way to defeat bad speech or speech that you consider to be bad is with counter-speech and counter argument. Banning people and banning points of view only gives them an allure of glamour. Holocaust Denial laws for example may instead of defeating a resurgence of neo-Nazism, perversely inflame such sentiments as those inclined to such views start to ask questions about why they are not allowed to debate this issue. Now I despise Holocaust Deniers but they will only be properly defeated by challenging them and not by sweeping them under the legal carpet. If the Left are so confident that their arguments would defeat Mr Robinson, then they should attempt to do so. For the left to be so OK with such bannings makes it look as if the Left do not have a leg to stand on when it comes to challenging Mr Robinson’s views.
I suspect that banning Tommy Robinson will make him and his cause a bit stronger. We saw how, when he was imprisoned over a Contempt of Court Act issue, masses of people took the steps to use the democratic process, campaign and demonstrate for his release. I was at some of these demonstrations and I can assure you that they were not ‘far right’ demonstrations. If they were, bearing in mind that I dress so smart for these demos that I look a little like an extra from ‘Fiddler on the Roof’,then I would have picked up on that, but I did not. These demonstrators were just ordinary Britons, some white, some black, some working class and some middle class. All of them however were convinced that Mr Robinson had been the victim of a major injustice. I suspect that the banning of Mr Robinson from Facebook and Instagram may have a similar effect.
Finally, the third way that this banning is going to backfire is the way that it is going to boost alternative tech and alternative social media. Some of those who have been banned in this latest tranche of censorship have followers who can be numbered in the millions in the case of Tommy Robinson himself. Others who have been banned from Facebook and Instagram also have large numbers of followers, from the tens to the hundreds of thousands. Many of these people and accounts are now going to migrate to platforms that are more respectful of the concept of freedom of speech and also platforms that are unwilling to cooperate with British law enforcement when they come asking for details of Britons who are alleged to have committed thought or speech crimes. I suspect that the big winners out of these bannings will be Gab,Minds and Bitchute with more traffic also going the way of sites like Freezoxee. The smear that the left have indulged in with regards to platforms like Gab and Minds which is that they are a ‘far right echo chamber’ will no longer have any currency as more and more ordinary Britons shift from Facebook to places like these. I’m already noticing that there are many more Britions who are doing their microblogging on Gab rather than bother with the dying platform that is Twitter. Social media platforms are in my view only treated as good so far as the majority of users can feel that this platform can be trusted. Because of the recent bannings there are now an awful lot more people to add to an already growing pile of individuals who do not trust legacy social media platforms. I’m already seeing evidence that maybe this ban is not going to be as effective as the govt and Mohammed Shafiq may wish by some of the numbers that are claimed to be for new sign ups to Tommy Robinson’s standalone enterprise tr.news One source said that there had been 50k signups in the last 24 hours and bearing in mind the number of people who followed Mr Robinson on places like Facebook, then this is a very believable figure.
This move, which I believe is possibly a move by the Govt, Islamic groups and the BBC to try to keep a lid on Britain’s current problems, looks like a move made both in panic and in fear. There could be panic in Govt circles about what might happen in the very near future when people stop parroting the BBC’s line about Mr Robinson ‘far right/EDL etc etc’ and start listening to some of what Mr Robinson may be saying and finding it chiming with their own experiences? A million motivated followers could, if they wished, become a political force to be reckoned with a force that would of course upset the more violent elements of Britain’s Muslim communities with predictable results. The government may have calculated that there is better to suppress the likes of Mr Robinson who isn’t violent than have to deal with a potentially violent backlash by some Islamic types if Mr Robinson’s ‘blasphemy’ is not dealt with. It may seem to the government that it may be less disruptive to quash this movement by any means necessary rather than deal with the problem of Islamic violence. If Mr Robinson or those like him become vehicles with which the public can express their disgust at some of the less than savoury aspects of Islamic theology and culture then it also undermines much of the fluffy bunny propaganda put out about multiculturalism and especially Islam. If we have the right to argue and discuss whether multiculturalism is a failure or not the people might feel free to ask other questions such as ‘why am I being forced to say that women have penises?’ I happen to think the Government are wrong on this. I think that all those who have pushed for these bannings and think that this is the end of the problem may well be mistaken. I think that perversely these bannings will increase support for Mr Robinson’s brand of politics rather than damp it down.
